(ridiculous author at large)

Given that it’s been … I don’t know how many days since I’ve read the book I was referring to on Monday, I think it’s time to declare the book a DNF. I haven’t even thought about it. I am clearly just not into it, so it’s time to move on.

It’s freeing to decide that my time is worth more than a book that’s doing nothing for me. It means that I value myself enough to know when I’m wasting my time. It also means that I have a lot of books to read, and I’m not going to spend precious reading time on this particular book anymore. Oh well. They can’t all be winners.

Meanwhile, I’m deep into The Hanging Tree and have reached the point where I’m beginning to fret a little about having no more books left in this series just yet. I have one novella and one novel left, plus three graphic novels. There will be new installments later this year, and while I know this, I’m impatient and I want moar. I’ll live.

Are you one of those stubborn, determined readers who finishes everything that you start? Because I have learned that, while I think it’s an admirable quality, I’m not that kind of person. I used to think that I was! I’d get to a point in a book where I was stalled because of one reason or another. Usually, I just wasn’t gelling with some aspect of the story. More often than not, I fail to care. Something within the book has to make me care. I’m at that point with one of my current reads, and while part of me truly wants to finish the book due to other factors, I find that I just do not give one good goddamn about what happens. Nothing in this book has me interested in what happens at the end.

If you didn’t read my recent Favorite Things column over at Speculative Chic (and why not?), you may have missed me geeking out about one of my newer found loves: Panic! At the Disco.

I know, the band’s been around for a while. I’m sorry for my lateness to the party. To be fair, when the band debuted, I was obsessed with classic rock. I pretty much missed the first ten years of 2000-era music while I was listening to Queen, Pink Floyd, Def Leppard, and others. Mr. Price was the one who sparked my Panic! obsession a few years ago. As you may have read in the post that I linked to above, I came home from work one day in 2016 to Mr. Price being all excited to show me this video that had started playing while he had YouTube on in the background during his day. It was “Death of a Bachelor,” and I was utterly smitten. Behold!

And now the part where I use the “read more” tag, because I love you. Always remember that I love you.Continue reading →

My husband is a board game enthusiast. He’s really fond of hobby games. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it’s a broad descriptor for those expensive board games that you might have seen in places like Barnes and Noble. We’re not talking about Scrabble, or any of the myriad Monopoly games. These are games that can take hours to play. We used to play regularly with another couple, but we had a pretty major falling-out with them a few years ago and haven’t had any “board game” friends since.

Well. Being who he is, Mr. Price has infectedintroduced a new set of friends to the world of hobby games. This all started with Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment. Having observed our friends’ enjoyment with that game, Mr. Price decided to attempt to ease our friends a little further into the world of hobby games with one of the best introduction games: Ticket to Ride.

The game has a deceptively simple premise. One is given tickets, which are routes that you must complete with your tiny plastic trains. You complete these routes by drawing color cards that line up with various lines between major cities. Any routes that you do not complete by the end of the game result in negative points. As I said, it’s deceptively simple. Children can play the game. However, a ton of strategy comes into play. I’ve had to make backup plans for my backup plans in past games. We ended up playing this game with our friends during the last two weekends. After the first game, our friends enjoyed the game so much that they both bought the mobile version. Last weekend, we played twice. One of them solidly trounced both Mr. Price and myself. We’re planning to go a little further and introduce them to Pandemic, which is a cooperative game. It’s you and your compatriots versus the game itself, which intends to destroy the world. It’s kind of like a reverse Plague Inc.(where you play as the plague which aims to destroy the world, and which I’m terribly fond of…I’m not certain what that says about me).

It’s been a ton of fun, and I hope that they catch the bug a little bit stronger than they already have. It would be nice for Mr. Price’s enormous collection of games to finally get some usage. Plus, we all know how much I love sharing the things that I love. It’s pretty much my rasion d’etre these days. Hopefully, within a few weeks, I can report back on our attempt to save the world from an unknown plague.

A few weeks ago, I took my turn on My Favorite Things over at Speculative Chic. This is a regular column in which we typically invite guests over to share the things that they love best. The regular contributors take a turn every now and then, too. Here’s mine. My most recent edition, anyway. There’s a link to my first one within the text of this year’s column, so if you’re super curious, you can have two for the price of one.

That’s a line from yet another episode of Once Upon a Time, uttered by one Captain Hook upon his release from real-world jail. He states that he’s spent time in the “brig” before, but none so horrifying as our standard jail. Bologna can be pretty terrible, especially if you don’t know what you’re dealing with.
Yep, I’m still watching this delightful, visual crack-fest. I love it so much. It’s over-the-top, and the special effects are occasionally bad (as in, you can see bits of the green screen that was obviously used to create a LOT of the background sets), and the showrunners don’t give a flying fuck about accents. Belle, for example, is played by Emilie de Ravin, who’s Australian. A pre-iZombie Rose McIver plays Tinkerbell. Both of these lovely actresses use their native accents on the show. It’s a little off-putting, to say the least. I can almost buy the fairy having an accent, but Belle? Is the only one of her family who speaks the way that she does. It’s weird.

What I really love is the fact that the show takes every single public domain work of fairy and folklore that it can find, tosses it in a blender, and then pours out this delightful smoothie of weirdness. The main characters are dealing with the flying monkeys and the Wicked Witch of the West as I write this. I watched Snow White and Prince Charming fight Medusa a few episodes ago. Robin Hood and Sir Lancelot have made appearances. Doctor Freaking Frankenstein is in this show (and his episode is shot in black and white, which makes for a particularly fun experience).

If you want to read the entire thread, go on. I can wait. If not, long story short: somebody took an eARC of Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame and uploaded it to a book piracy website. I am beyond infuriated at this behavior. One, because McGuire’s probably my favorite writer. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am still alive because she is still publishing books. So to see that her work is being stolen? Sends me into a fit of rage so strong that my hands are actually shaking a little right now. The person who created one of my actual lifeboats had her work stolen, and her future work jeopardized because of potentially lost sales.

Secondly? As a book blogger who is doing her damndest to read and review responsibly with NetGalley so that I can keep a good rating and keep getting access to eARCs, I am LIVID with the person who got access to Middlegame and decided to just throw it up on a piracy website. This person is endangering the entire eARC process for the rest of us. I don’t get paid to do this; this is my hobby. I spend my time reviewing books because I love them, and I want other people to read and love them as well. I have purchased copies of easily two-thirds of the books that I received early access to, because I enjoyed them that much. Some idiot, the same idiot that has done this to plenty of other authors, is potentially poisoning the well for the rest of us. Other writers have managed to convince their publishers to skip eARCs; if McGuire’s publishers decide to stop offering her work via NetGalley, I’ll live. I’ll be pissed off that one person ruined it for the rest of us, but I’ll live. And I wouldn’t blame them one bit.